Embodiments of the present invention relate to the global sharing of and access to electronic resources, and in particular to sharing data based on user interactions with the data.
As long as electronic resources have been available there has been an interest in sharing those resources. Prior to the proliferation of networked electronic devices, data would often be stored onto electronic media such as punched tape, magnetic cassettes, floppy disks, and the like. With modern advances in network connectivity the need for portable data storage media has decreased while the desire to share electronic resources over widespread computer networks has increased.
Numerous techniques for sharing electronic resources over computer networks are in use today. For example, Dropbox™ by Dropbox, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif. provides cloud storage by which users can copy data between computers having the Dropbox™ software installed and share data with others. To do so, a networked folder is provided on the user's computer, and any data that the user moves to that networked folder can be synchronized with remote servers. The user may then access the data on the remote servers from another device having the Dropbox™ software installed or share the data on the remote servers with others by sending a link to a website where the other individuals may download the data.
While the more recent provisions for sharing data between users via networked computing systems provide enhancements over traditional file sharing such as copying data to portable storage devices (such as CD's, DVD's, USB keys, and the like), all of these known techniques suffer from numerous deficiencies. For example, in a typical network-based data-sharing scenario, a user must explicitly identify specific data (e.g., a particular file) and then explicitly request that the identified data be shared (e.g., by dragging and dropping an icon representing the identified file from its host directory to a destination directory). Such tasks are not only burdensome but also inefficient.